


Turn the Page

by messageredacted



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Multi, Transgender, Wincest - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-14
Updated: 2012-01-14
Packaged: 2017-10-29 12:43:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/320005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/messageredacted/pseuds/messageredacted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam hasn’t seen his sister in four years. A lot more has changed than he ever imagined. (AU of the pilot).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Turn the Page

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written 16 April 2009.

It’s the clink of glass that wakes Sam from a sound sleep. Three years and he still hasn’t gotten rid of that hair trigger alertness. On the one hand, it reminds him of his dad far too often. On the other hand, this intruder is going to get a hell of a surprise.

He untangles himself from Jess, who shifts briefly in her sleep and settles. He rolls silently to his feet, picking across the carpet, automatically avoiding the obstacles he knows are there. Laundry basket, shoe, Jess’s hairbrush. He doesn’t need the light on to find his way. He stops in the doorway, peers through, his breath trapped behind his tongue where it won’t make a noise. He listens.

In the kitchen, a shadow moves in front of one of the curtained windows. Sam slips into the room and attacks.

His fist connects solidly with a face and he hears a surprised “Oof!” but instead of falling back, the intruder bounces forward, drilling a fist into Sam’s stomach, and Sam is down. Stiff fingers jab brutally into his diaphragm and Sam feels the air shove out of his lungs. The intruder pins him to the floor.

“Whoa, easy, tiger,” laughs a voice. Sam stops and squints up in the darkness. He can barely see a fuzz of short hair, the plane of a cheekbone.

“Dean?”

“You’re getting soft, Sammy.”

Sam hooks his ankle around a leg and flips them over, pinning the shadowed figure underneath him. He hears Dean’s breath whoosh out.

“Or not. Let me up.”

Sam obliges, holding a hand out. “What are you doing here?”

“I was looking for a beer.” Dean grins up at Sam, just a flash of white teeth in the darkness, and uses Sam’s hand to get up. The light clicks on and they both wince. Jess stands in the doorway, staring.

“What’s going on?” she asks sleepily, looking from Sam to Dean and back again.

Feeling a little sheepish, Sam makes the introductions. “Dean,” he says, “This is my girlfriend, Jess.”

Dean looks Jess up and down, beginning to smile appreciatively. Sam rolls his eyes but feels a rush of warmth. It used to be Dean with the hot girlfriends, not Sam, and Sam can’t help but to feel smug. He steps closer to Jess and makes a grand gesture towards Dean.

“Jess, this is my sister, Dean.”

The appreciative smile drops from Dean’s face and she sighs. Jess looks confused.

“Yeah,” Dean drawls. “About that.”

##

Dean sits the same way as the men did in the bars where they used to hustle pool. She has her knees spread wide, one booted foot up on the coffee table. She dangles the beer bottle at her crotch, slowly turning it in her fingers. Her chest is strangely flat. Sam keeps looking at it, wondering where everything could have gone.

“Dean, I just don’t…” Sam stops and sighs. “You can be a lesbian without having to turn into a man.”

Dean rolls her eyes and her fingers tighten on the beer bottle. She takes her foot off the coffee table and leans forward. “Okay, Sammy, this is _not_ the part you should be freaking out about, okay? Dad is missing.”

Sam leans forward too, echoing Dean’s pose. _You can’t outman me_. “And how is this different from any other time that Dad’s gone missing?”

Dean’s eyes flick briefly to Jess, who is in the kitchenette making coffee. Her voice—which, Sam has noticed, is slightly deeper than he remembers—is measured and laden with meaning. “He’s on a hunting trip and he hasn’t been home in two weeks.

“Did you try his cell?”

“Did it take you four years of college to get that smart? Of course I tried his cell.”

“Right. Where was he going?”

“The last I heard from him, he sent me this.” Dean tosses him a cell phone. Sam stares blankly at the coordinates on the screen and Dean elaborates. “It’s a town called Jericho. I figure we check there.”

“And you can’t do this on your own?”

Dean puts the beer bottle on the coffee table and clasps her hands together, interlacing her knuckles. Her fingernails are all bitten down to the quick. “I can. I don’t want to.”

It would be so easy to refuse. Sam’s gotten good at this, at denying the past. He’s gotten good at those ridiculous ice breakers that they have at the beginning of each school year, where they have to talk a little bit about themselves and instead of saying things like “I learned to shoot a gun when I was five” or “I went to eleven different high schools before I graduated” or “We should own stock in the rock salt business since my family buys so much of it”, he has a whole list of lies prepared. He spent his whole life in a small town you’ve probably never heard of. His parents died when he was young. He’s an only child.

But at the same time he knows a couple things. He knows that Dean wouldn’t have come to him unless all other avenues were exhausted. He knows that his sister has an almost pathological aversion to asking for help. He knows that two weeks missing is beyond the realm of “maybe Dad just forgot to call”.

“Okay,” Sam finally says. “I have to be back by Monday.”

##

Getting into the Impala is like getting back into his childhood. It isn’t necessarily a good thing.

Dean is in the driver’s seat, drumming fingers on the steering wheel. Last time Sam saw her, she still had the dark blond dyke cut, but now he can see muscles in her arms and a hollowness to her cheekbones. There is a ghost of stubble on her jaw, which really throws Sam for a loop. There is something alien there, something that is not Sam’s sister.

“It’s like old times, huh?” Dean says cheerfully as they pull away from the curb.

“Don’t remind me,” Sam mutters, and then he suppresses a wince when he see Dean’s jaw set angrily. He shouldn’t have said that.

“Oh, boo hoo,” Dean bites out. “Maybe if you hadn’t started so many fights—”

“He started them!” Sam suddenly realizes how childish he sounds and he closes his mouth, taking a deep breath.

Dean closes her mouth too. Her fingers are tight on the steering wheel. Sam can see a vein throbbing in her neck. She sucks in air through her nose and lets it out slowly, calming down.

Sam looks out the window. “I’m going to be a lawyer, Dean. I’m going to marry Jess. We’re going to be happy.”

Dean’s voice is steady again. “You can do that? Knowing what you know?”

“Yes,” Sam says firmly.

“I know you, Sammy. You can’t—”

“Don’t call me Sammy,” Sam cuts in. “I can. I did. I will.”

##

Sam remembered one sticky summer when they stayed at Bobby’s house. Sam was probably eight at the time, and Dean was twelve. Actually, she was still Deanna then; she hadn’t yet gotten to insisting they call her Dean.

Sam was in the third grade at the local elementary school. This particular school had mixed third and fourth grade classes for some reason that Sam didn’t quite understand. One day in the spring, the fourth graders were taken from the classroom and split into groups of girls and boys for some mysterious lecture.

They returned with little pamphlets and the girls got free samples of some plastic pad-like things that Sam didn’t recognize, and when he asked a girl what it was she only blushed, so he snagged one of the pamphlets and read it under his math book while the teacher talked about fractions. The pamphlet was called _Puberty and You_.

It was really rather lucky of Sam to get the pamphlet, because Dad wasn’t exactly the person to talk to about such things, and the next year, when Sam was a fourth grader, they had moved to a school that didn’t teach such things, so if Sam hadn’t read the pamphlet he would never have known what a girl’s period was and why, that summer that they stayed at Bobby’s house, Deanna threw an enormous tantrum and cried for three days straight when her own period started for the first time.

Sam found her out in one of the mostly dismantled cars in Bobby’s lot, sitting with her feet up in the open window, laying on her back on the front seat and smoking a cigarette that she had probably stolen from Bobby. This was before Dad had let her cut her hair short, so it was a ragged chin length bob and it stuck to her neck in dark curls of sweat. She looked hot and uncomfortable and vaguely nauseous.

“Hi,” Sam said, leaning in the window over her head.

She furrowed her brow and blew a cloud of cigarette smoke into his face. “Go away.”

“I’ll tell Dad you’re smoking.”

Deanna glared up at Sam but didn’t say anything. Sam opened the back door and slid into the back seat. The back of the car was warmer, the sun slanting in the rear window. He rested his chin on the back of the front seat and looked over it at Deanna.

“Are you sick or something?”

“Yeah,” Deanna said sourly, flicking ash off the end of the cigarette. They were cheap cigarettes and had burned lopsided.

“Are you going to die?”

“Maybe.” Deanna gave up on the cigarette and stubbed it out on the seat. A gentle breeze picked up the last curl of smoke and pulled it out the window.

“Is it your period?”

Deanna pushed herself up onto her elbows. “How do you know about that?” she exclaimed, looking horrified.

Sam shrugs. “I read about it.”

“That’s gross, Sammy.” Deanna made a face, still looking horrified. She cast about for the cigarette, remembered she’d put it out, and then started fiddling with the cigarette lighter instead. It was also probably stolen from Bobby.

“It’s not gross,” Sam objected. “It’s, um, a beautiful part of the developing, um, flower–”

“Sammy!” Deanna shoved Sam in the chest. Sam sat down hard on the back seat and rubbed his chest.

“Ow,” he said.

“You deserved it.”

“I did _not_.”

“Yes you did,” Deanna said firmly. “Now go back to the house and leave me alone.”

Sam curled up on the seat instead, laying on his back and sticking his feet through the window just like Deanna.

“You’re fucking lucky,” Deanna said after a long minute. Sam heard Deanna shift in the seat and then she appeared over the back of the seat, resting her chin on the vinyl.

Sam just looked up at her, not responding. The window frame dug into the soft flesh of his calf, leaving a long red mark.

“You don’t have to suffer through this disgusting…” She looked down and perhaps made a gesture that was hidden by the seat.

“You can have babies,” Sam offered.

“I don’t want _babies_.” Deanna spat out the word like it tasted disgusting. “I don’t like _babies_. Am I supposed to think they’re cute or something, because I’m a fucking _girl_? Somebody else can take care of the goddamn babies.”

“I like babies,” Sam said. He knew he wasn’t really helping the situation but really there was nothing he could say to calm Deanna down at this point. Deanna peeled her chin from the top of the seat and leaned heavily against the door of the car.

“I wish I were a guy,” she said, and then she started absurdly to cry. Sam sat up and stared at her. She looked just as surprised as he felt. She rubbed vigorously at her nose with the back of her hand.

“It’s okay,” Sam said stupidly. He wasn’t really sure what to say to that. “I’m sure there are good parts to being a girl too. Like…” There was a pause as he plumbed the depths of his knowledge of girls. “…Breasts,” he offered finally.

Deanna snorted and the corners of her mouth edged up. “You can have my share,” she said, wiping the tears out of her eyes. “I don’t want them.”

##

The car looks like a paint can exploded inside of it. There may not be a body, but Sam doesn’t think the driver could have made it too far from the car.

“Any connections between the victims besides that they’re all men?” Dean asks, circling the car. The policemen watch her warily as if they’re not quite sure what to make of her.

“No, not so far as we can tell,” one of them replies. He exchanges a glance with the other officer and Sam knows that he’s not taking Dean seriously. It’s not the first time that’s happened, but Sam feels a surge of loyalty towards Dean. He moves to stand next to her.

“So what’s the theory?” he asks the officers coolly.

The officer answers him without looking at Dean. “Honestly? We don’t know. Serial murder? Kidnapping ring?”

“Well that is exactly the kind of crack police work that I’d expect out of you guys,” Dean drawls, and Sam knows that she’s noticed the condescension as well. Normally he’d be annoyed with Dean’s irreverence but this time he can’t bring himself to care.

##

Dad caught Dean hustling pool once when she was fourteen, and the fight afterwards was tremendous. They’d all been to the bar before, Dean and Sam eating fries and greasy hamburgers in a booth while Dad played a few games of pool, looking for information. Dad never hustled when Dean and Sam were there, probably worried that the game would turn ugly.

So when Dean didn’t come home from school and Dad got a call that she’d skipped her classes, he checked the bar first. Sam stayed home, waiting on the couch, his stomach a bundle of nerves. He hated it when they fought. Dean had been fighting with Dad a lot recently. Dad said he wouldn’t abide by her teenage angst, and Dean said she wouldn’t put up with his military bullshit.

Dad came in twenty minutes later with Dean in tow, and it was obvious that there had already been a lecture in the car. Dean had the sullen look of someone well entrenched in her argument.

“Go to your room, Deanna,” Dad snapped as soon as they got in the door. Sam winced.

“It’s _Dean_ ,” Dean snarled, for the thousandth time since she started insisting on the nickname. Dad refused point blank to call her Dean. She stalked into the room that she shared with Sam and slammed the door.

It wasn’t so much that Dean had been hustling pool—after all, Dad had taught both of them how—but rather that she’d been doing it alone, without any protection. She could have gotten hurt. Dean was growing into her body now and men were starting to notice her, even though she was only fourteen. She had pretty eyes, a pretty mouth, nice cheekbones. Sure, she knew how to defend herself, but still. Something could have happened.

Sam waiting in the living room until Dad disappeared into his own room, then followed Dean. She was lying on her back in bed, staring up at the ceiling. She didn’t look at him as he entered.

“Hey,” he whispered, shutting the door quietly behind himself.

Her eyes flicked to him. Her mouth was tight with anger. She said nothing.

“Where were you?”

She let the air out her nose in an angry huff. “The bar,” she said.

Sam could guess. “Playing pool?”

She sat up in bed. “I made fifty bucks!” she hissed at him, jerking on hand sharply. “Fifty fucking dollars!”

“Did he let you keep it?”

She laughed bitterly. “He made me give it back.”

Sam rested his chin on his hand and stared at her. “You gonna go back?”

Dean brought her knees to her chest and hugged them. The anger had gone from her face and now she looked thoughtful. Suddenly she sat up and began rooting around in her backpack next to the bed. She emerged with a hunting knife, a gift from Dad.

“He said I was too pretty to go off on my own,” she said, staring at the knife. Sam felt his stomach lurch a little, wondering what she was going to do with it. Go knife Dad? She had been angry enough.

She grabbed a hank of hair in one hand and studied it for a second, then yanked the knife through it, cutting it free. She dropped the hair into the trashcan by the desk rather than letting it fall to the floor. Sam didn’t point out that for all of her railing against Dad’s military bullshit, she still kept the room impeccably clean.

“Wanna help?” she asked after a minute, hacking off another lock. Sam got out of bed and came over. She sat down at the desk so he wouldn’t have to reach up.

Her hair was warm in his hands, like a living thing. He carefully cut off a thick handful, careful not to yank on her hair too hard. He opened his hand and let the hair fall into the trashcan.

Dean didn’t say another word as Sam cut off the rest of her hair. Goosebumps rose on her neck when a loose strand rubbed against it. Sam cut off another handful of hair, watching the goosebumps. He lightly dragged the tips of the cut hair across her neck. More goosebumps rose and she slapped at his hand.

When it was done, Dean looked in the mirror with a sort of nervous excitement. Sam was no hairdresser and the knife was hard to cut with, so her hair was tufted and haphazard. It certainly looked different to see all of that hair gone, although Sam privately thought that Dean wasn’t any less pretty for all of that.

“Thanks,” Dean said breathily, turning her head from side to side. “This is awesome.” She laughed as if she couldn’t quite believe herself. Sam grinned at her in the mirror and she grinned back.

##

“You know, I think they would have taken you more seriously if you had used a badge with a female name on it,” Sam says.

Dean is taking them through town for lack of anything else to do. Her gaze flicks sideways.

“You can bite me,” she replies, sounding annoyed.

Sam tries again. “It’s just that if you wouldn’t keep pretending—”

Dean hits the brakes and the car behind them honks. She turns fully to face him and Sam understands suddenly that she’s not just annoyed: she’s _furious_.

“I. Am not. _Pretending_.”

Sam stares at her, completely at a loss for words. “I…”

She straightens up in her seat. The cars behind them start pulling around them, horns honking. Dean ignores them. She seems to be trying to swallow her anger enough to speak to him. “We talked about this already,” she says finally, her lips tight.

“Well, you’re going to have to explain it to me again, because I don’t get it,” Sam replies. “You’re acting like one of those creepy transsexuals, and I—”

“I _am_ transsexual!” Dean shouts, her voice cutting Sam off in mid-sentence. “I’m not acting like one, Sam! I am! ”

Sam rubs his forehead. “I don’t even know what that _means_.”

Dean sighs, then eases the car into a parking spot at the curb. She shuts it off and rests her forearms on the steering wheel, staring out the windshield. “You know you’re a guy, right?” she says finally. “Deep inside, you know that you’re male.”

“Of course.”

“Well _so do I_.”

“But you’re not! I know I’m a guy because I’m a guy!”

Dean suddenly sounds tired. “It doesn’t always work that way.”

Sam stares at her profile. It’s the same profile he’s known all of his life, the slightly upturned nose, the bowed lips, the faintest cleft chin. There is definitely stubble there now, backlit by the light from the window. Her skin doesn’t look as soft as it was in the past. Her forearms, resting on the steering wheel, are ropy with muscle. Her fingernails are chewed to the quick. Is it because he’s known her so long that he can’t see her as a guy? Is it because he’s seen her in her bra, and with long hair, and in her brief nail polish phase? Maybe it’s all of that he’s seeing when he looks at her, and maybe that’s why he thinks of her in his head as “she” and not “he”.

Dean’s eyes are fixed on something ahead of them. “You think that’s Amy?” he asks.

Sam turns and looks out the window. There’s a girl hanging missing posters in front of the matinee, and he remembers one of the police officers mentioning the victim’s girlfriend this morning.

“Could be,” he says, glad for the distraction. They get out of the car and head over in silence.

“You must be Amy,” Dean says jovially when they reach her. Sam feels himself cringing a little inside.

“Yeah,” she replies, glancing at Sam briefly before turning her attention to Dean.

“Troy told us about you,” Dean continues. “We’re his uncles. I’m Dean. This is Sammy.” Sam can’t quite read the brief glance that Dean sends him.

“He never mentioned you to me,” Amy says.

“We’ll that’s Troy, I guess. We’re not around much; we’re up in Modesto. So we’re looking for him too, and we’re kind of asking around.”

Another girl approaches them, looking warily from Sam to Dean. “Hey, are you okay?” she asks Amy significantly.

“Yeah,” Amy says.

Sam can see Dean’s appreciative look at the new girl, and it’s probably a good idea to head that off at the pass. He smiles at the girls. “Do you mind if we ask you a couple questions?”

In the restaurant, Dean and Sam sit across from Amy and her friend, who hasn’t yet told them her name. The friend keeps looking at Dean and at first Sam thinks that she’s giving her the same look the police officers did, but then Dean throws her a wink and she blushes, smiling and looking down.

“Here’s the deal, ladies,” Dean says. “The way Troy disappeared—something’s not right. So if you’ve heard anything…”

Amy and her friend glance at each other. Dean pounces.

“What is it?”

The friend looks uncertain. “Well, it’s just…with all of these guys going missing, people talk.”

“What do they talk about?” Sam realizes when he stops talking that Dean’s voice has echoed his.

The girl keeps her eyes on Dean. “It’s kind of this local legend. This one girl, she got murdered out on Centennial like…decades ago. Well, supposedly she’s still out there. She hitchhikes, and whoever picks her up—Well, they disappear forever.”

Dean taps her fingers on the table and glances at Sam. Sam can read this look. Dean looks back at the two girls.

“You girls have been helpful,” she says. Sam takes the hint and slides out of the booth.

The friend grabs a pen from her purse and writes something on a napkin. She holds it out to Dean. “If you need to know anything else, you can give me a call,” she says breathily. Dean’s smile widens and she takes the napkin, glancing at it.

“Thanks, Heather.” Dean’s voice lingers on the name, and then she slides out of the booth as well. Sam glares at the girl, Heather, and her smile falters.

“Down, boy,” Dean mutters, brushing past Sam.

##

One afternoon after school when Sam is twelve, he skips football practice and walks home instead, nursing an upset stomach. Dad’s off on a hunt and probably won’t be back until Friday so he won’t know that Sam skipped it.

When he comes into the house and puts his book bag on the couch, there’s a faint noise from Dean’s room, a sort of choked off moan. Sam freezes, his mind jumping to the last time this happened, when he discovered Dean with her vibrator. That’s an image he is never going to be able to scrub from his memory.

For a long minute he stands in the living room. There’s another moan, louder. Sam is beginning to feel uncomfortably warm. Then there’s an answering moan and all of the blood drains from Sam’s head and travels somewhere south. There’s another girl in there with Dean, and that is _really fucking hot_.

He moves into the kitchen and gets himself a glass of water. From here, he won’t be seen immediately when Dean comes out of the bedroom. He leans against the counter, his groin pressing against the silverware drawer. Now there’s a rhythmic noise, the bed thumping the wall, and one of the girls won’t shut up. Sam’s hand creeps down into his pants.

The noise in the bedroom reaches a crescendo and then stops. Sam bites his lower lip. He thinks of Dean sprawled in her bed, her boy jeans down her thighs, her white bra cupping tiny breasts, her stomach clenching. He comes into his fist.

The door opens in the hall and someone goes into the bathroom and starts washing something. Sam washes his hands in the kitchen sink.

“Sammy,” Dean says from the doorway of the kitchen. “I didn’t know you were home.”

Sam glances briefly over his shoulder and sees the pink flush in Dean’s cheeks. Not embarrassment but exertion. “Yeah,” he says.

##

Dean recognizes the bridge in the photograph on the Jericho Herald website. Turns out that the mystery hitchhiker wasn’t murdered—it was suicide. Constance Welch jumped off the bridge after the accidental drownings of her two children.

There’s something awkward about it when they stand together on the bridge later that night. The car has been removed now, no sign of the murder earlier today. Dean walks to the railing, her hands in the pockets of her leather jacket.

“You’re really serious about this, aren’t you?” She doesn’t look at him when she speaks. “You think you’re just gonna become some lawyer? Marry your girl?”

Sam juts out his chin. “Maybe. Why not?”

Now she looks at him, slanting a glance sideways. “Does Jessica know the truth about you? I mean, does she know about the things you’ve done?”

“No. And she’s not ever going to know.”

Dean snorts. “Well that’s healthy. You can pretend all you want, Sammy. But sooner or later you’re going to have to face up to who you really are.”

She starts walking down the bridge. Sam follows, fuming.

“You first,” he spits.

Dean stops in her tracks. She turns slowly back to him.

“What?”

“You know what I mean, Deanna.”

She’s back at him faster than he can react, taking him by the shirt and slamming him against the rail of the bridge. “You fucking _asshole_ ,” she says, her voice strangled with anger. “I am facing up to who I really am. You think I want to be transsexual? You think I’m doing this for _fun_? I’d give anything to be a normal guy, or hell, even happy with being a girl. But I’m not, and I have to face that.”

He squirms slightly against the rail but her fist doesn’t budge. She is stronger than Sam remembers, or maybe he’s just been getting soft.

She doesn’t wait for him to formulate a response. “And while we’re on the subject of who we really are, how about we talk about the _real_ reason why you want so badly for me to be a girl.”

Sam feels something stir uncomfortably in his stomach. “What are you talking about?”

She hasn’t let go of his shirt yet. She leans forward, her whole body pressing against him. It is suddenly apparent to him that her chest is flat, and that realization almost distracts him from what she’s saying.

“You’ve always wanted me.” She leans forward a little more and his attention snaps to her words. “You wanted me since we were little. Do you think it makes it a little less screwed up to lust after your sister than your brother?”

“What the fuck?” he stammers, horrified. His chest feels like it has frozen solid and something in the back of his head is saying _shit, shit, shit, shit_.

“I know you, Sammy. Better than anyone in this entire world. _Anyone_.” Her breath ghosts across his lips. The anger seems to have subsided into something else, but what, Sam can’t tell. His brain is working in overtime to figure it out, and then something white flashes to the right of them and both of them look.

Constance Welch lets go of the bridge, plummeting out of sight. Dean lets go of Sam’s shirt and takes off at a run, Sam on his heels.

There is nothing in the water below, no sound of a splash.

“Where’d she go?” Dean scans the water.

Sam can feel the air cooling his skin where Dean had been pressed against him just seconds before. “I don’t know.”

An engine turns over and headlights suddenly blink on. They both turn.

“What the—”

“Who’s driving your car?” Sam tries to squint through the windshield.

Dean’s car keys jingle when she pulls them from her pocket, but Sam already knows what is wrong with the car. It starts rolling towards them, engine roaring, and as one they turn and run.

##

 _You guys having a reunion or something?_

Sam can see the way Dean lights up when she thinks Dad might be within reach. For a second he feels a rush of emotion and it takes him a little while to realize that it’s jealousy. He’s had Dean to himself for two days now, and things have been going better than he expected. Sam knows that the second Dad shows up, all of Dean’s attention is going to shift to him. Sam will be the third wheel again. This was why he left in the first place.

But Dad’s not in the hotel room, and hasn’t been for a few days. Sam studies the ring of salt on the floor. “Salt, cats-eye shells. He was worried. Trying to keep something from coming in.” He glances up at Dean and sees her staring at a few pictures on the wall. “What do you got there?”

“Centennial Highway victims. I don’t get it. I mean different men, different jobs, ages, ethnicities. There’s always a connection, right? What do these guys have in common?”

Sam’s attention drifts to the far wall. A scrap of paper is tacked to the wall. In black marker, Dad’s handwriting has scrawled the phrase ‘woman in white’. Beneath it is the same news article on Constance Welch that they found in the Jericho Herald. He reaches out and turns on the lamp.

“Dad figured it out,” he muses.

Dean turns. “What do you mean?”

“He found the same article we did. Constance Welch, she’s a woman in white.”

Dean lets out a breath and looks at the pictures of the victims on the wall. “You sly dogs,” she says to the pictures. “All right, so if we’re dealing with a woman in white, Dad would have found the corpse and destroyed it.”

“She might have another weakness.”

“No.” Dean’s voice is firm. “Dad would want to make sure. He’d dig her up. Does it say where she’s buried?”

Sam glances at the rest of the wall. “No, not that I can tell. If I were Dad, though, I’d go ask her husband. If he’s still alive.”

Dean turns towards the bathroom door. “All right, why don’t you see if you can find an address. I’m gonna get cleaned up.” She opens the door and steps inside.

“Hey, Dean—” Sam starts and Dean pauses, glancing back. Sam flushes. “What I said earlier…”

Her expression remains neutral as she waits. Sam forces the rest of it.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know if I…understand completely, but…”

Dean holds up her hand to him, a smile quirking the edges of her lips. “No chick flick moments.”

Sam smiles in relief. “All right, jerk.”

“Bitch.”

##

The sun is just turning the horizon orange when Dean gets out of the shower. Sam hasn’t slept since Dean broke into his apartment, and he’s beginning to drag. He lies on the coverlet of one bed, staring up at the ceiling.

A gust of warm, humid air comes out of the bathroom when Dean steps back into the room. Sam lazily turns his head to look at her and suddenly he’s wide awake.

She is holding the towel around her waist with one hand as she steps to her bag and rummages through it for clothes. Sam was right earlier when he suspected that her chest was flat; her breasts are gone as if they never existed. Her chest is muscled as if she’s been working out, which she probably has. A line of dark hair leads from her bellybutton to the towel.

She pulls out a pair of jeans, then turns and looks straight at Sam. Sam averts his eyes, looking up at the ceiling again and feeling himself start to turn pink.

“Enjoying the show?” Dean asks dryly.

Sam clears his throat. “You had surgery?”

Dean tosses the jeans onto the other bed. “Yeah,” she says shortly. After a pause, she adds, “Just the top so far.”

 _So far_. Sam stares at the ceiling, his eyes seeking out patterns in the shadows. He feels as if he’s been hit in the face with a plank. Surgery is so… extreme. You don’t have your breasts removed on a whim.

“What did Dad think?” Sam hears himself ask.

“He got used to the idea.”

Sam turns his head back to Dean. Dean is standing next to the other bed now, still holding the towel, still looking at Sam, waiting for some sort of a reaction. There is water beaded on her chest… But suddenly, staring at her, Sam can’t think of her as _her_. That chest is not female. Those muscled arms, those callused hands, the buzzed hair, all of that is not female. Even Dean’s face somehow isn’t the face he remembers. If Sam didn’t know, this could be a man standing here.

“What I said earlier,” Dean begins awkwardly. “About you…”

Sam waits but Dean seems to have stalled. For a second their eyes meet and Sam wants to hold up his hand and say _no chick flick moments_ as easily as Dean did but then suddenly Dean has crossed the small space between the beds, sinking one knee into the mattress at Sam’s hip, leaning down towards Sam. Breath gusts across Sam’s lips again as it did on the bridge but there is no Constance here to distract them.

The kiss is wet and firm. Sam’s hands fist in the bedsheets. He strains upwards with just his mouth, latching onto Dean. Dean is cupping his chin with one hand, the other hand still holding the towel in place. There is an explosion of heat in Sam’s chest. He doesn’t believe that this could possibly be happening, and so rather than make any sudden movements and scare Dean away, he stays perfectly still, his eyes wide to record every detail of this impossible event.

Dean pulls away first, breathless. They stare at each other from inches away. Sam still doesn’t move. The moment stretches thinner and thinner, like spun glass.

Then the moment breaks. Dean glances to the side, flushing. “I was—”

Sam doesn’t wait to hear the rest of it. He reaches up and pulls Dean down for another kiss. Dean lets out a startled noise but quickly responds to the kiss.

This time Sam closes his eyes, focusing on the sensation. Dean’s hands disappear under Sam’s shirt and skim up his sides. Sam moves his knuckles down Dean’s ribs. It is a strange sensation, feeling hard muscle where there should be soft curves. Sam has never been with a guy. It feels like things are missing.

Dean throws a leg over Sam’s hips. The towel is loose and Sam can feel the bare, hot flesh of Dean’s thighs on either side of his waist. Sam is so hard he thinks he might burst right through his pants. He reaches down to his zipper but Dean has gotten there first, unbuttoning the top button and unzipping his jeans. Sam lifts his ass and Dean yanks Sam’s jeans down his thighs.

Sam brings Dean down again for a kiss, pressing their mouths together desperately. Dean grabs a hold of Sam’s cock, fingers wrapped firmly around him. Sam bucks up into his fist, startled and overwhelmed. In the back of his head the word _Jessica_ flashes but for the moment all he can think of is the firm grip on his cock and Dean’s lips on his own. He loves Jessica, he really does, but he has loved Dean for far longer.

Dean wedges a knee in between Sam’s legs, straddling Sam’s thigh. Sam presses his thigh up between Dean’s legs, feeling the wetness touch his leg. Dean pushes hard against him, hips twisting, hand matching the movements.

“Jesus—” Sam chokes out. He grabs Dean’s hips, wanting to roll them over and get control of the situation, but Dean is relentless, in complete control. Sam tips back his head, his mouth twisting, and comes across Dean’s wrist in powerful spurts. Dean’s hips work against his thigh, bearing down hard, and Dean gasps shakily against Sam’s neck.

For a minute they remain like that, breathing hard together. Then Dean slides off him, onto the bed.

 _I love you_ , Sam wants to say.

##

Sam wakes again when the sun is halfway across the sky. Dean is in the bathroom. The door is half-open and Sam can see that Dean is standing to piss into the toilet, which is a mystery that Sam muses over until Dean comes back into the room.

“Did you get the husband’s address last night?” Dean asks, sitting on the other bed and pulling on shoes.

“Yeah.” Sam yawns and gestures to the table where his laptop is sitting. “The post-it on top.”

“We should do that today.” Dean eyes the window. “Probably before the sun sets again.”

Sam sits up and stretches. “Just give me a few minutes to wash up.” He crawls out of bed.

Dean sits down at Sam’s laptop and opens it. “Hurry up.”

Muttering under his breath about morning people, Sam shuffles to the duffle bags on the floor and opens one. It takes him a minute to realize his mistake—Dean’s taste in clothes is pretty much identical to Sam’s—until he comes across a small plastic box. Inside is a small glass bottle marked ‘testosterone cypionate injection’ and a syringe.

Sam stares at it. “What is this?”

Dean glances over. “My vitamins.”

“Did a doctor prescribe this?”

Dean snorts. “I can take care of myself, Sammy. I’m a big boy.”

The words are jarring, though they shouldn’t be. Sam puts down the plastic box. “Are you really sure you know what you’re doing?”

“I know what I’m doing,” Dean snaps immediately. “I’ve done research. I’m not stupid.”

Sam rests his elbows on his knees and looks at Dean. “The changes from testosterone are permanent, you know.”

Dean’s mouth opens and closes but no sound emerges. Sam pushes onward. “I know you think you won’t regret it but a few years down the road—”

The chair scrapes back. Dean stares down at him, eyes luminous with fury. “So you were okay with the fucking _mastectomy_? Why, did you think I could always get a boob job if I changed my mind?”

“Dean, I just don’t want—”

“Fuck you,” Dean spits. “Take your fucking time with your shower. I’m going to finish our fucking job.”

Sam watches helplessly as Dean grabs the post-it from laptop and storms out the door of the hotel room. The door slams so fiercely that the window rattles in its frame.

##

Dean makes it to the car and makes it a good five blocks without lifting his foot from the gas. It feels good to hear the engine roaring along with his fury but if he keeps this up he’s going to get pulled over and he doesn’t need that.

He lets up on the gas and tries to swallow down the blinding rage. Maybe it was stupid to think that Sam would be able to understand. But honest to fucking God, was he a moron? How many times does he have to tell Sam he’s serious before Sam actually understands?

Dean abruptly pulls into the supermarket parking lot and parks the car. His hands are shaking in his anger. Maybe he needs to walk it off. It’s either that or punch something, and there is nothing around to punch right now.

He gets out of the car and shuts the door, then leans against the hood, taking a deep breath. It helps.

“Any luck yet?”

Amy’s friend Heather is standing on the sidewalk in front of the supermarket, a grocery bag on her hip. She’s kind of cute in a goth sort of way, especially when she smiles.

“Luck?” It takes Dean a second to switch gears in his head. “Oh. Not yet, but we’re still looking.” He doesn’t want to tell her that Troy is almost definitely dead. Women in white don’t usually let their victims off with a warning.

She cocks her head to the side. “Do you really think it’s the hitchhiker?”

Dean shrugs. “Do you believe in ghosts?”

She takes a second to think about the question. “I think there are a lot of unexplained things in the world,” she says finally.

Dean gives her a half-smile. “That there are.”

Heather glances at his car and shifts her bag of groceries. “You never called me back, you know.”

“I only saw you yesterday.”

“You can make it up to me by giving me a ride home.” She shifts the grocery bag again. “Otherwise I have to walk.”

Dean hesitates just a second, then waves a hand to the car. “Hop in.”

Heather gets into the car, holding the bag of groceries on her lap. Dean gets in and starts the car. “Where to?”

“Take a left on the street,” Heather says, leaning back in her seat and half-turning to watch him.

Dean pulls the car onto the street and turns left. Heather runs a hand over the leather seat.

“So do you believe in ghosts?”

Dean smiles out the windshield. “Yeah.”

“A Federal Marshall who believes in ghosts,” Heather muses. “A young, hot Federal Marshall who believes in ghosts. You can turn right here.”

“Hot?” Dean laughs.

“Mm-hmm. It’s the white house on the left.”

He pulls the car to the curb and stops. “Wasn’t much of a trip.”

“Don’t sell yourself short.” She grins at him, then puts one hand on the seat between them and leans towards him. “I appreciate the lift.” She turns up her mouth to him.

He kisses her because she expects him to, and because if this were last week, he wouldn’t hesitate. She tastes like cherry chapstick, which is startling because he was expecting something else. It’s not a desperate kiss. It doesn’t taste like gas station coffee.

She breaks the kiss and gathers up the bag of groceries. “See you around,” she says, sliding out of the car.

“Hey,” he says, and she hesitates, glancing back hopefully. He looks down at the post-it. “Do you know where Riverside Ave is?”

Disappointment flickers across her face. She points back towards the supermarket street. “Take a left out of this street, follow it for about three miles. It intersects with Riverside there.”

“Thanks.” He watches her walk up the path to the front of the house and let herself in, then turns the car around and heads back out onto the street.

Her directions take him towards the hotel again. His fingers tighten on the steering wheel but he swallows down the anger. Sam will get used to the situation in time. In any case, he only has a little time before Sam goes back to his normal life with his normal girlfriend, and he might as well make the remaining time tolerable. Maybe he’ll pick up a coffee or something on his way back as a peace offering.

As he passes the hotel, he automatically glances towards the door of their room, and something in his stomach drops. There are two police cars in front of the motel, and the door to their room is open.

 _Shit_.

##

When the knock comes at the door, it’s too late to make an escape. He’s out of the habit of looking out for the police, anyway.

They let him cool his heels in an interrogation room for a while before an older police officer whose nametag reads Pierce comes into the room and drops a big cardboard box onto the table.

“You ready to tell us your real name?” Pierce asks, resting his hands on the sides of the cardboard box.

Sam clasps his hands on the table in front of him. “No, sir,” he replies.

The policeman’s mouth thins. “I’m not sure you realize just how much trouble you’re in here.”

“I don’t see any trouble here.”

Pierce knocks his knuckles against the side of the box. “You got the faces of ten missing persons taped to your wall. Along with a whole lot of satanic mumbo jumbo. Boy, you are officially a suspect.”

Sam inclines his head. “That stuff was in there when we got there. The cleaning lady must have forgotten to clean up.”

“Uh-huh.” Pierce looks entirely unimpressed. “I know you got partners; one of them’s an older guy. So tell me…Dean.” He reaches into the box and pulls out a journal. Sam’s eyes fix on it. He hasn’t seen that journal in three years.

“I thought that might be your name. See, I leafed through this, what little I could make out. I mean, it’s nine kinds of crazy. But I found this, too.” He flips it open to one of the last pages near the back. On a clean sheet of paper, in Dad’s familiar black scrawl, is written _Dean 35-111_. “Now, you’re staying right here till you tell me exactly what the hell that means.”

It’s coordinates, that much is obvious. Dad used to do that all the time. But that’s not what startles Sam. The thing that makes Sam’s mouth hang open is that it says Dean. Not Deanna. Dad would _never_ call Dean anything other than Deanna.

Have things really changed that much? Is Sam really the holdout here?

##

Joseph Welch is a short man with big ears. How he ever got someone like Constance is a mystery. The years must have been hard on him.

“Yeah, there was another man around here a few days ago,” Joseph says as they walk through the salvage yard. His eyes are hidden in the shadows under his baseball cap. “Said he was a reporter.”

“That’s him,” Dean says, giving him a smile and trying to look open and friendly. “We’re working on a story together.”

“Well I don’t know what the hell kind of story you’re working on. The questions he asked me…” The man shakes his head, frowning.

“About your wife Constance,” Dean supplies. “He asked you where she was buried?”

Joseph shoots him a look. “Yeah,” he says slowly.

“And where is that?”

“In a plot behind my old place over on Breckenridge. Look, do I really have to go through this twice?” Joseph looks irritated.

Dean shakes his head. “Nah. I think we’re done.”

“Good.” Joseph starts to turn away.

“You ever feel guilty?”

Joseph pauses, glancing back, his nose wrinkling like he’s smelling something distasteful. “What?”

Dean shrugs, hands in his pockets. “For cheating on her.”

Joseph turns back to him. “What?”

“You cheated on her, right? I don’t know why you would, hot chick like that, but that’s besides the point.”

Joseph’s face twists and turns an unflattering shade of red. “Who the fuck do you think you are? Coming to my house, asking where the love of my life is buried, and then accusing me of cheating?”

“You cheated on her, and when she found out she was upset. She drowned the kids in the tub, then killed herself.”

“Get the fuck off my property.” Joseph points towards the Impala, saliva spraying when he talks. “Before I call the police.”

Dean steps around him, heading for the car. Joseph remains where he is, watching him go. When he’s halfway to the car, he stops and turns back.

“She’s cursed now, you know. She roams the roads and punishes any unfaithful men that drive by. I think you know what I’m talking about.”

“I loved her!” Joseph shouts. His hand is still up, still pointing at the Impala, as if he’s forgotten to finish the gesture. “She was the love of my life! Sure, I made some mistakes, but she would never do such a thing. Now you get the hell out of here, and you don’t come back.”

##

It’s getting dark out again when Dean heads back. He stops at a convenience store to use the pay phone, then gets back in the car and heads back to the hotel.

He’s getting near the bridge when his cell phone vibrates in his lap. “Hey there, jailbait.”

“Thanks,” Sam’s voice crackles over the phone. “I’m assuming the fake 911 call was you.”

“You’re welcome.” Dean rests his wrist on the steering wheel. “Look, Constance is buried at her old house. Dad did talk to the husband, so he must have headed there next. If he did, I don’t know why he didn’t, you know. Finish the job.” He swallows down the surge of anxiety.

“Dad left Jericho,” Sam says.

Dean straightens. “What? How do you know?”

“I have his journal.”

Another chill threads its way up Dean’s spine. “He doesn’t go anywhere without that.”

“Well he did.” There is the sound of a page turning. “He left us coordinates. Don’t know where yet. I’ll check that soon.”

Dean scowls out the windshield. “Why didn’t he finish the job? He had all the clues. All he had to do was burn the corpse.”

“I guess we’ll find that out soon. Look, come and pick me up—”

Something flashes white in front of the car and Dean jerks his head up, slamming his foot down on the brake, the cell phone dropping into the passenger footwell. He sees the woman’s face in the split second before the car slides through her. There is no impact.

The car comes to a stop. Dean stares straight ahead, through the windshield at the empty road.

Constance stares at the road ahead of them as well. “Take me home,” she says.

##

“Bite me,” Dean replies.

“Take me home.”

Dean twists in the seat. “I don’t think so.”

Constance’s face is pale and morose. The car lunges forward, doors locking by themselves. Dean pulls on the handle but it’s impossible to open.

The house on Breckenridge has been empty for years and it shows. The car comes to a stop in front of the house, headlights illuminating the front door.

Constance’s voice comes, disconsolate. “I can never go home.”

Dean turns to look at her and she’s beside him on the seat.

“I don’t have anyone to be unfaithful to,” Dean says.

“Liar.” She flickers slightly, fuzzing like a bad cable connection. For one fraction of a second, he sees nothing but teeth.

Then her hands are wrist deep in his chest and pulling on things they shouldn’t be able to reach. Dean screams, thrashing, his hands connecting with nothing.

There are four deafening pops and the window beside Dean shatters. He gets the vague impression of Sam standing outside his window, but there isn’t time to thank him. He turns the key in the ignition and the engine roars.

“Let’s go home,” he says.

##

 

Their single headlight half-illuminates the road ahead of them. Dean insists on driving despite the pained grunts whenever he shifts too much in the seat. Sam sits on the passenger’s seat, hands clasped nervously on his knees. They haven’t said anything for about fifty miles.

“Dad’s okay with it, isn’t he?” Sam says finally.

Dean glances over. “What?”

“With you. With your change.”

Dean shrugs, biting off the edge of a fingernail. “He’s gotten better.”

There is a pause as Sam seems to gather his thoughts. Then he turns to Dean again. “I’m sorry I’ve been an ass. I just… didn’t want to think that things had changed so much when I was gone.”

“It was always this way, Sammy,” Dean says softly.

“I know. It’s just…” Sam shrugs and looks out the window. “I guess I just wanted you guys to stay exactly as you were when I left, so I wouldn’t miss anything.”

Even though he’s not looking, he can tell that Dean is smiling. “Yeah.”

The silence grows, and for a minute Sam is almost content to let it lie. Abruptly, though, he turns back to Dean.

“Women in white only target men.”

Dean doesn’t look at him, just smirks out the windshield. “Yep.”

This time Sam lets the silence stay, and he settles back in his seat, getting comfortable. There’s only a few hours of driving left. Soon he’ll be home again.


End file.
